From the Edges

Cartoons

The NIH Keeps Up With The Times: 1, 2,
3.
David Baltimore Has A Flashback: ***. The NY Times Keeps Up With Times: ***.
The Faith of Anthony Fauci: ***. Anthony Fauci Explains How HIV Causes AIDS: ***.
Robert Gallo on The Force of Ejaculation: ***, on HIV Theory: ***, Lectures in Marseilles: ***.
David Ho Does The Math: ***.
John Mellors Sets the Record Straight: ***.
Bono, el Magnifico, Holds (Another) Press Conference: ***.
Anthony Fauci Explains Journalism in the Age of AIDS: ***.
Anthony Fauci and David Ho Disprove an Old Adage: ***.
Anthony Fauci Explains ICL and AIDS: ***
The CDC Can't Keep Up With The Times:***
The Method of the "Small Inquisitor" Moore:***
The Co-Discovery of a Nobel-Worthy Enzymatic Activity:***
The Revenge of the "Very" Minor Moriarty:***
Julie Gerberding and Anthony Fauci Learn Arithmetic:***
Osama Obama Has a Message for Africa:***

July 03, 2008

Anyone who follows the HIV fiasco long enough will notice a common pattern: a dissident position which is described as "looney" and "dangerous" one day is accepted as conventional wisdom several years later. Some examples:

HIV does not directly kill cells (Duesberg, circa 1987);

AIDS will not spread outside the original risk groups and into the general heterosexual population (Stewart, Maver, and many others, late 1980s and early 1990s);

HIV tests are not standardized, reproducible, and have no gold standard (Perth group, early to mid 1990s);

"Hit early, hit hard" is a dangerous prescription (Duesberg, Sonnabend, Farber, and many many other people, late 1990s).

The impetus for the article was the loss of patent protection for AZT by GlaxoSmithKline a couple years ago. Here are some admissions the article makes. Keep in mind, these acknowledgments appear in a mainstream HIV magazine:

ACTG 019 (one of the early AZT trials) "bypassed many regulatory barriers".

AZT received approval "before any long-term toxicity trials in animals had been completed."

AZT is "highly toxic" and "some people were unable to tolerate it at all, suffering vomiting, muscle pain and searing headaches. Many needed blood transfusions." “We were discussing whether people should be setting their alarms for a sixth dose of AZT that day; it’s unbelievable now,”

Not only ACTG 019, but also the Concorde trials, may have become unblinded.

AZT monotherapy was "an apparent failure".

AZT may "contribute to fat loss".

Nevertheless, the article concludes with an activist quote: "combining [AZT] with other drugs saved many lives and opened up the path for the nukes (NRTIs). For many people this meant life." Given the above admissions, one might ask what evidence there is that AZT ever "saved many lives" in the first place. And this brings up back to the original oft-cited 1987 Fischl study, which was noted by John Lauritsen (see "AZT on Trial" and "FDA Documents Show Fraud in AZT Trials") as marked by incompetence, unblinding, and outright lying.